Lesbian Representation on Australian Television
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Screening the Dykes of Oz: Lesbian Representation on Australian Television Rebecca Beirne Rebecca Beirne is the author of Lesbians in Television and Text after the Millennium and the editor of Televising Queer Women: A Reader. She has published multiple essays discussing queer representation on television. She received her PhD from the University of Sydney and is currently working at the University of Newcastle, N.S.W. Address correspondence to: Rebecca Beirne, [email protected]. SUMMARY. This essay provides a survey of lesbian representation in Australian-made television programming. Beginning with the 1970s, when Australia led the Anglophone world in terms of queer representation on television, the essay discusses major instances of queer women appearing on Australian television including in such shows as Prisoner, Home & Away, Neighbours, All Saints, The Secret Life of Us, Last Man Standing and Kick. KEYWORDS. Lesbian, Dykes, Australia, Bisexual, Television, Chequerboard, The Box, Prisoner, Raw FM, Home and Away, Neighbours, All Saints, Play School, The Secret Life of Us, Last Man Standing, Kick Australia was the first Anglophone nation to screen a lesbian kiss on primetime television, and yet, little academic analysis exists which explores the proportionately high number of lesbian characters and desire on Australian-made television. Due to this dearth, this 1 essay does not seek to analyse a single instance of lesbian representation on Australian television, but rather forms a survey text of lesbian representation on Australian television from 1972-2007, in hopes that these texts will be the subjects of further scholarly investigation. Although Australian television began broadcasting relatively late, in 1956, by the 1970s it was well advanced in terms of queer representation. In addition to several representations of gay males, there were also internationally significant instances of lesbian and bisexual women, both fictional and non-fictional, on television in Australia in the 1970s.i Particularly notable was the appearance of lesbian activists Sue Wills and her partner Gabby from Campaign Against Moral Prosecution (C.A.M.P.) on the public broadcaster’s documentary series Chequerboard in 1972 (Howes; Hidden History). The episode “This just happens to be a part of me” (screened 17 October 1972) featured interviews with a gay male couple and a lesbian couple, but mainly focused on the male couple, with the lesbian couple appearing only briefly at the end of the episode.ii Another significant moment in the representation of queer women on Australian television in the 1970s, the first female same-sex kiss in this venue, took place in 1974 on The Box (Ten 1974-1977) between Vicki Stafford (Judy Nunn)—“a bisexual TV reporter who was regularly kissing other women and soon proved the most popular character of the series” (Burfitt) — and fifteen year-old Felicity (Helen Hemmingway). While Vicki also seduced a male character in the same episode, this kiss was significant in that it occurred close to two decades before the first televisual lesbian kisses in the U.S. (1991) and U.K. (1993). Of course not all representations of lesbian characters on Australian television during the 1970s were positive. Another of Number 96’s queer characters was fiendish lesbian witch Karen Winters (Toni Lamond), whose defining moment was stripping her flatmate Bev Houghton (Abigail) for a sacrificial Black Mass. Surprisingly, this did not spark a mainstream public outcry as may have 2 been expected for such a scene (‘Celebrating 40 Years of Television’), perhaps reflecting the prevailing attitudes of the period (see The Hidden History for discussion of 1970s Australian television and societal attitudes towards homosexuality in the 1970s). Better known to international audiences was Prisoner (Ten 1979-1986), which became a popular cult export and “is still one of the most talked about shows across 50 years of Australian TV” (Cox 25). Set in a women’s prison, Prisoner “tapped into the rise of the women’s movement, the emergence of prison reform groups and a growing interest in women in prisons” (Clark and Samuelson 48), and featured a number of lesbian characters over the course of its run. Unlike many other series, Prisoner did not subscribe to the imperative of ensuring that lesbian characters on television are played by feminine and conventionally attractive actresses. The first glimpse seen of a lesbian character was Franky Doyle (Carol Burns) in the pilot, slouching and smoking against a wall. Franky was short-haired, wore overalls and no make-up, and was more decidedly butch than any female character seen on even today’s television. This butch coding, however, is displayed in a rather negative (albeit camp) way, and it became clear that Franky was meant to embody every heterosexual woman’s nightmare of prison – immediately and firmly propositioning her new cellmate within moments of her arrival. Franky was presented as hyperbolically aggressive and slightly unbalanced (though no more so than heterosexual prison bully, Bea). Joan Ferguson was another lesbian character, and Keith Howes remarks that although “superficially, Prisoner reinforced every stereotype going (Ferguson was a ratbag sadist, corrupt and potentially murderous) …For all her misdeeds she was recognisably human as were all the girls: lesbian, straight and undecided” (42). Another key lesbian character was the victimised Judy Bryant (Betty Bobbit), who deliberately got herself sent to prison to be with her girlfriend (who was later killed by a male guard), and eventually set up a half-way house for ex- 3 prisoners. With the exception of Prisoner, lesbian visibility was fairly non-existent on Australian television throughout the 1980s, and it was not until the mid-to-late 1990s that lesbians began to re-emerge on television, beginning with the primetime screening of the annual Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras on publicly owned television network the ABC in 1994. The coverage “threatened to split federal parliament, but went ahead, won the ratings and was among the most watched TV events of the year” (Burfitt). During the 1990s, the ABC was also the broadcaster of Raw FM (1997-1998), in which secondary characters Gerry Sano (Amanda Douge) and Sam Kosurco (Sophie Heathcote) were both portrayed as lesbians, though only two of thirteen episodes gave noteworthy screen time to their sexualities or romantic lives, with one of these episodes focussing on Gerry’s internet romance with a woman, who was later revealed to be a man. This inclusion of lesbian characters, yet hesitance to depict their sexual relationships with women, was also common to some U.S. series that featured lesbian characters, as has been observed by Hantzis and Lehr, Torres, and Moritz. It points towards the beginnings of mainstream “tolerance, which” as was noted by Sue Wills in the 1972 Chequerboard episode, “is different from acceptance.” With the constant thirst for storylines and romantic complication inherent in soap operas, soaps have often been willing to include lesbian desires and trysts, though somewhat more hesitant at truly including lesbian characters and their relationships as an integral part of their story arcs. Short-running soap opera Pacific Drive (Nine 1996-1997), however, featured the character Zoe Marshall (Libby Tanner), who came out as lesbian and had relationships with several women over the course of the series. Soap export Home and Away (Seven 1988-present) has also included various presentations of bisexual and lesbian characters. These have included minor lesbian character Mandy Thomas (Rachel Blake), and her relationship with major 4 character Shannon Reed (Isla Fisher). Shannon’s character left the series, as well as her male love interest, to live in France with Mandy in 1997 – with this potential relationship thus remaining conveniently offscreen. Desiree Upton (Phoebe Bright) and Gypsy Nash (Kimberly Cooper) also displayed same-sex desire in side-plots, with an ongoing and workable lesbian relationship seemingly impossible to depict within Home and Away’s heterosexual economy of desire. The most recent queer female character on Home and Away, Eve Jacobson/Zoe McCallister (Emily Perry), was a particularly unfortunate example of bisexual/lesbian representation. Although depicted in a relationship with a male character, she is later revealed as the ‘Summer Bay stalker’, a previously faceless villain, who had been terrorising the residents for some time, motivated by her love for previous villainess Sarah Lewis (Luisa Hastings Edge). After killing various characters, she eventually died in an explosion of her own devising in 2006. Eve was also in a relationship with Tracey (Sarah Enright), a detective investigating her case, who helped her in various schemes. This murderous, house-burning, bomb-planting, mentally unstable woman was certainly a far cry from anything one could consider to be a positive representation, though the fact that her bisexuality was only revealed in retrospect at least meant that viewers were spared a prolonged exposure to this troublesome and all-too-frequent popular cultural correlation of bisexual women with violent psychopaths.iii Even the perennial suburban ‘family’ soap Neighbours (Ten 1985-present), which has been described as “the most watched Australian show of all time, claiming a daily audience of 120 million in 57 countries” (Cox 26), has had some lesbian characters. Most notable of these has been the lesbian teen character Lana (Bridget Neval), whose story-arc took place in 2004. Lana’s storyline reflected many experiences common to queer teens, including ostracism and bullying. Although she initially attempted to hide her lesbianism from other characters, in 5 reaction to having had to leave her previous school as a result of the intense bullying she experienced after coming out to a friend, she developed feelings for lead character Sky (Stephanie McIntosh), and kissed her. Lana’s character and this kiss were a significant breakthrough in terms of lesbian representation on mainstream Australian television, considering Neighbours’ 6:30pm timeslot and reputation as a relatively conservative family soap that many children watch.